About The Show



I like to do "theme" exhibitions. They give my shows a clear sense of unity and purpose and keep me artistically challenged.

This year's show evolved out of several series of local landscape photography that I did about 12 years ago called "Lancaster County Scenes" and "Mid-west Scenes".

Skies ­ an unrelenting subject for Nebraska artists.

While living and working in Philadelphia in the early '80's, I remember driving cross-country to visit family in Lincoln. The huge Midwest vista from the I-80 overlook just east of the Platte River, took my breath away one morning on one of these trips in 1982. "My God, this is what they mean when they say Big Sky Country!" I remember murmuring to myself.

Then nearly a year ago, I listened to painter, Hal Haloun talk about how Keith Jacobshagen influenced his incorporation of one of the most striking visual resources in our state. I began thinking and pre-visualizing on how it (the sky) might work for me. We do get some really awe inspiring artistic handiwork by Mother Nature. But how, do you include it into a photographic image without becoming another clichéd visual postcard?

I started some preliminary photography with this in mind late last spring, but I couldn't get focused with the theme until just before we got blanketed with snow late in January.

My concept involved including iconic details of Nebraska into the horizon, punctuated by the vast firmament. Sometimes, it's the serendipity rhythm of multiple elements on the horizon. Other times, it's the interplay of these elements with the foreground. But overall and dominating is that huge sky.

Photographer and friend Bill Ganzel said, "I like what is happening in your images. The rhythms of objects, and the sense of scale, and the sense of space."

John Nollendorfs